Hot Tubs North Wales & Cheshire

How To Buy A Hot Tub – A What To Look For Buyers Guide
Hot Tubs (aka Spas) are great and they are a great addition to any family. If you think about it a
new hot tub is like adding another room to your home but at much less cost. You can provide a
place for 6 – 8 people to hang out. Plus you get the health advantages, a chance to pamper
yourself and your family and talk. You get to use your garden the whole year round too, if you get
a properly insulated spa.
Most people in the UK don’t have the room for a swimming pool and lets face it we don’t get the
weather for enough months of the year to make a pool a worthwhile investment. So a Hot Tub is
the ideal solution to getting out in your garden and having some quality time for yourself, as a
couple or as a whole family.
So you’ve decided to buy your first hot tub. Like most people you go online to find out what’s what
and you see a vast array of different hot tubs from all over the world all claiming to be the best.
So what do you need to look for? What’s important and how do you sort out the good spas from
the expensive mistakes?
First let’s talk budget. What tends to happen is you have a look on the internet and find a spa for a
few thousand pounds available online and that becomes your budget. But wait. A hot tub is a fairly
major investment. Do you set your budget for a home or a car based on the very cheapest
around? Probably not. Chances are you try to get the very best home or car for you and yours that
you can afford. Taking into account factors such as running costs, quality, warranty, maintenance
costs, personal taste in aesthesis etc. Why not treat your hot tub purchase with the same respect?
1. How many people? This is the first and most important consideration. Commonly people
decide based on how many in the family but think about the extended family and friends who may
also may also use the spa from time to time. And look at the footwell – some people can
be sensitive about feet, so make sure there is lots of room for them! Also important to remember
is that children grow and you’ll expect to have your spa for years so consider the next few stages
of your growing family.
2. What are you going to use it for? Some will say health and therapy, for others relaxation
and relationships, and for some others entertaining and parties. Will you need a music system,
would you like a water feature? Best to get this straight in your own mind before the salesman
gets to work on you. Again remember that today’s toddlers are tomorrow’s teenagers and maybe
rethink the music system. When looking at music and entertainment note that CD/DVD systems
are unlikely to be future proof as most music is downloaded today. Also however good the system
is, it won’t be able to cope with wet hands on CDs or DVDs. Don’t forget lighting – most decent
spas will offer at least colour changing led lights to create ambiance in the evening.
3. Where are you going to put it?: Too far from the house and you might be put off the trek to
your spa on a cool day. Using your hot tub in winter is one of the great joys in life but a walk in
the snow to get there could be off putting. Most manufacturers will say you need a concrete base
for your spa. This basically means they have cut the cost of making their spa by expecting their
customer to provide the floor! Check the structural integrity of the spa you are thinking of buying
and if it needs a concrete base because it has a thin floor ask yourself what other corners have
they may have cut?
4. Keeping it clean? This could (and might become) a whole other article so for here we’ll keep it
simple. In a nutshell your spa needs to be filtered, sanitised and oxidised. Are more filters better?
Yes for the manufacturer and dealer – they sell way more filters that way! But if more filters were
better prestige cars would have loads of oil and air filters – they don’t. Whatever gets through filter
1 will get through filters 2 to 5 (yes, some have 5, taking up nearly the room of a seat!).
Sanitation is normally chlorine or bromine based according to taste. Some have salt water
sanitising systems that break the salt into chlorine and sodium, sanitising your spa. Oxidising is
needed to get rid of the “used up” sanitizer in the water which has done its job. This is done by
releasing the used up sanitizer into the atmosphere, keeping your spa nice and clean. Ozonators
built into the spa help to do this job but are not recommended for indoor spas as the ozone could
build up in the room and be breathed in, harming the good bacteria in the lungs that help to keep
us healthy.
A good spa dealer will provide a starter kit with your spa when they install it and show you how to
test the water and balance the chemicals.
5. What about maintenance? And warranty?: Can all spa equipment, including the jets and
plumping be accessed, if necessary, for future maintenance? Does the warranty have unreasonable
exclusions? Some aren’t covered for use “in direct sunlight” or if installed outside of the country of
manufacture, or if installed indoors. Some even expect you to ship the hot tub back to the
manufacturer for repair, at your expense! Make sure the warranty is as long as possible, as
comprehensive as possible and that there are no unreasonable exclusions.
5. Jets: Are more Better or are Better Better? Many hot tub dealers will try and sell you lots of
jets and this has become shorthand for how amazing a spa is supposed to be. A good jet offers a
hydrotherapy massage and should turn (spin) to produce this effect. You should also be able to
turn jets off and on to suit yourself. Many cheaper hot tubs with lots of jets use cheap jets that
simply shoot water out at you with little hydrotherapy benefit. Plus a spa with lots of jets but for
example only one pump wont have much pressure coming from each of those jets. Good
hydrotherapy jets are better jets. You should also decide if you might want air jets (these just
bubble up air through the water), quite nice but make sure that air doesn’t get pulled in from the
outside or you will have cold air bubbling through your water. Uncomfortable of a cold day and
expensive as it cools your tub!
6. What will it cost me to Run and Look After? Obviously the better insulated the better. Spas
range from no insulation to blown foam insulation to perimeter insulation. Clearly no insulation in
the UK is going to cost you a fortune to run. Generally the colder the climate where the spa is
made the better the insulation will be as hot tubs are manufactured for their local market. A “full
foam” hot tub means the cabinet is blown full of foam providing some insulation but obviously
covering all the plumping and jets in foam so making the spa almost impossible to repair should it
ever leak. Plus any air pulled into the water will have to come from outside meaning cold air being
pushed into your tub while you use it. Perimeter foam insulation acts like house insulation. The
walls and floor are insulated creating a warm cavity where all the equipment and plumbing is and
meaning that all the equipment can be reached for servicing or upgrading for your spa in years to
come.
Also take close look at the cover, it should have a snug fit when closed and obviously be as thick
and strong as possible. For safety it should hold the weight of a couple of adults, kids and pets are
notorious for landing on a closed hot tub cover. Most cheaper hot tubs have a vinyl cover filled
with cut foam and most take on water and become heavy over time. By that stage they have
stopped doing their job insulating your tub.
7. Installation: What to Expect Some hot tub suppliers will only offer “Kerbside delivery” which
means they leave your spa at the bottom of your drive and expect you to put it in place. This is a
very dodgy practice from a safety point of view. Hot tubs can be heavy and unwieldy to move. And
with some manufacturers if you move into place yourself you void the warranty too. Also a
professional should wire it up – it’s not a job for an amateur.
A good hot tub dealer will install your spa in its final position, fill it and won’t leave you until they
are happy that everything is operating properly and they have shown you how to operate and look
after your new hot tub.
8. The Fun Bit: This comes in trying out hot tubs and haggling with your local dealer. Local of
course because one day your new spa may need a service or you may just want to pop in for some
advice. Unlike your car you can’t just take it to a local garage to be looked at – they have to come
to you, so local is generally better, plus they are far more likely to come out to your spa at a
reasonable cost if they sold it to you – they want your referral business!

Tags: hot tub advice

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Hot Tub Buying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.